The plot is pretty well-laid out. At times it seems to drag on, but for the most part, it's a gripping tale wherein you discover the truth behind conspiracies and lost history. If you like this sort of tale, it's quite a good read. Most dystopian fiction I read these days is targeted towards young adults, and as much as I enjoy those, it can be nice to read a book that doesn't involve a teenage love triangle and associated drama. This is suspense and mystery and discovery without other elements taking up plot space.

A pretty much spoiler free synopsis

The story takes place inside The Silo, a self-contained, mostly-subterranean city in a desolate world. It's consists of 144 levels of mechanics, farming, administration, and whatever else a self-sufficient city needs. It's subdivided into three 48-level sections--the up top, containing more administrivia (mayor and sheriff, IT, medical), the mids (largely farming), and the deep down (supply, mechanical, including mining at the very bottom.)

This isolated city of people are all living in the Silo, and they don't go out. Every so often, someone commits a capital offense and is suited up and sent outside to clean the sensors, thus cleaning up the view from the screens up top (this being a fatal task).

Not only are they entirely contained in there, but they don't really know where this all started. It's mentioned that some priests say god made the Silo and isn't it nice. On the other hand, they have books full of a big livable outdoors with bizarre creatures--are those works of real history, or fiction? It's also mention how there was an uprising in the past, but no one really knows the details. There are various (legally-enforced) taboos about Don't Talk About Outside and the like. Just Don't Worry About It.

The lead character in the first part is Sheriff Holston, whose wife had, three years prior, discovered how to undelete old data from the servers and subsequently gone crazy and decided she wanted to go outside. Just saying such a thing qualifies you for that fatal duty, and out she went to clean the sensors and die promptly thereafter. (Almost always when people are being sent out, they insist they won't clean--clean the sensors for you jerks who just condemned me to death? Go to hell!--and then they always go through with the cleaning anyway. The why of this is a big mystery.) His investigation subsequently leads to us following some other characters in a quest for more answers, and soon, all of society is unravelling in the way post-apocalyptic stories often do when the truth is uncovered.

How to get it

* The five books are "Holston", "Proper Gauge", "Casting Off', "The Unravelling", and "The Stranded". It's typically referred to as "Wool". Kind of how "The Fellowship of the Ring" is technically two books, and was originally intended to be published as such. No one talks about "The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I".

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